


Epiphany in Exile

by starofroselight (afwrit)



Series: server snapshot - [dsmp oneshots] [1]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Real Person Fiction
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Exile, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Introspection, Manipulation, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 00:48:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28591275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afwrit/pseuds/starofroselight
Summary: Logsteadshire is gone. Tommy contemplates.
Series: server snapshot - [dsmp oneshots] [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2165646
Comments: 6
Kudos: 71





	Epiphany in Exile

**Author's Note:**

  * For [froggyfrogg](https://archiveofourown.org/users/froggyfrogg/gifts).



> My full respect to the content creators for making such a vivid world I could write for. Despite the tags, this is not intended to be Real Person Fiction, rather the characters these wonderful people are playing on the Dream SMP. I do not mind if my fics are shared cross-platform. Know only that if any of the real-life people mentioned in my stories are uncomfortable, I will take it down immediately without hesitation. Likewise, if any of them see it, I hope they enjoy.
> 
> Here's my version of the moment that made me cry.

Logsteadshire is in ruins. The ruins of ruins. Ruin implies some level of lasting structure to be destroyed and here there is none.

It’s scattered all around him in bits and pieces, in his frayed hair and on his tattered clothing. All the mementos of his time in L’Manberg are a scent on the wind, being carried ever farther. His empty eyes are trained on what remains—a smoking, sizzling crater that smells faintly of meat.

Tommy runs his hands through his hair. Wood chips and rubble snow down to settle his knees. He is low, he is as small as his campsite and as far away from himself as he is from Dream’s lands. There’s nothing left to do but curl up, smaller, smaller, until Tommy is crouched by the beach in the fetal position with fierce breathing as the dolphins play, oblivious to the teenage rebel who has lost everything.

Again.

Only the tower remains.

That tower, a cursed incomplete tower made of logs and rugged determination. It was admirable and entirely pointless, a beacon, a lighthouse into the landscape. It wasn't even worthy of being built of cobblestone (and cobblestone wasn't that bad, was it?). Dream had goaded him into with with supplies and entraping encouragements. Perhaps it was a simulacrum of the skyscrapers of L’Manberg—Manberg—whatever. Did it even matter? The result was the same: a justification of loneliness and space unfulfilled. What didn’t matter was how much it hurt, how much it ached, how far away the horizon seemed, or how many miles of ocean pulled him away from the friends, with enough cityscape, with enough, with enough. . .

Will it ever be enough?

His hands are grounded against the stone. His face is scrunched and burning. Still, nothing falls from it as he tilts his head up to a cloudless sky.

The Tower in tarot is the worst card of the deck, the only bad pull of the lot. There are much scarier names, of course, more intimidating to the uninformed. Death, for instance, invites ideas of great murder and violence. However, it merely means change. The idea of change invites a different kind of dread. No, the Tower is a different force entirely and TommyInnit is continually drawing disaster after disaster: his friends, his pets, his mantra, his inspiration, his country, his discs.

He’s moving without purpose. His hands find the ground and push up. 

A noise tears through his throat, animalistic and primal. It is the sound of a wounded beast, the sound of death, of all things lost that never were and were never meant to be. Was Logsteadshire never meant to be?

The noise shakes his throat raw. Like a cow mourning her calf—Mushroom Henry. He can't force himself to walk over to Mushroom Henry, a replacement for a cow destroyed at the hand of one of Dream's friends, just as this settlement was a replacement for—

Tommy cannot allow himself to finish that thought. His head swims. The noise grows louder. 

All animals know that sound of loss. They flee the area, fearing tragedy. They cannot know that this cannot be outrun. 

He is entirely disconnected from himself. His legs move despite lacking the energy. His fingers stretch, then tighten into fists as he climbs his way up the mountain, and it feels like a cold clockwork machine, something of hoppers and pistons and redstone. Something he could never understand. Was he too stupid? Was that it?

He’s moving upwards. He’s thinking about everything he’s done wrong, of jokes with friends, of sunsets and music discs, and of a fire quickly put out and repaired. He’s thinking of delusion and dreams, of hallucinated visitors, specters come to haunt him. He thinks of Ranboo, who he covered for and defended. He thinks of Quackity, someone power-hungry and once an enemy but whom Tommy had hoped he could make a friend. He thinks of Fundy, a thief and a liar but someone desperate and trusted as well. He thinks of Niki, Niki with her bakery and no need for power beyond her own voice.

He thinks of Wilbur. The aria that was Wilbur, the song and melody that enveloped the entire world, the symphony he can hear an ocean away.

He’s climbed to the top of the tower he was building on the hill. The tower Dream had helped build. He looks over the top. Thinks briefly that it isn’t tall enough.

Even Ghostbur has left him. If Ghostbur is even real. Tommy can’t touch him, can’t hold him even though he never let Wilbur hug him. Ghostbur can’t ruffle his hair or make fun of Tommy for dodging his gestures of affection.

No, the tower isn’t tall enough.

He’s building higher up. He’s towering. It feels natural, this urge to tower up when he’s stressed or needs to think. 

This is different. 

He finally thinks of Tubbo.

Around his neck, the glass broken from the brunt of the impact, hangs his compass. His Tubbo. He tucks it and the leather strap that keeps it yoked to him underneath his shirt. If something happens to him, something heavy and brutal, he wants it to survive.

He’s shoving wooden logs beneath his feet. When they run out, it becomes planks. He’s sitting on one, pulling another one out, then shifting his bodyweight up. The tower, more of a pole, is crooked as it climbs into the sky. 

Each block is another thought. Each thought is another block, higher and higher up.

Tubbo, who is his friend. Tubbo, who was his friend? Tubbo, with a soft heart and wide eyes. Tubbo, with a tone cool as the obsidian that trapped them in L’Manberg. Tubbo, who he trusts and loves so much the two are practically blood brothers. Tubbo, whose blood was spilt all across the election floor. 

Tubbo, Tubbo, Tubbo.

It stops sounding like a name. Just a word.

The air is lighter up in the clouds. Breathing is harder. Tommy curls up tighter on the edge, into a ball.

It’s here, like this, he finally thinks of Dream.

Dream, the hope he’d been clinging to. His salvation. With one word, Dream could boat him back into the arms of L’Manberg. With one order, Tommy’s world would make sense again. Dream. . . whose orders exiled him from his home and friends. Dream, who is conniving, an enemy, not to be trusted. Dream, who manipulated Wilbur when he lost his mind, the little green snake! Dream, who made him shed his armor and start anew on a whim. Dream, who held him when he cried about being alone.

Tommy shivers. The silence is unbearable. He says the first thing that comes to mind, the only statement that can disregard why someone as great as Dream would care about the likes of him,

“He was just here to watch me.”

It sits in his chest. The comment festers; then, a spark.

“He was just here. . . to watch me.”

The hurt in his chest contorts to something brighter. He feels light, loose, like a knot within him has been unwound as his face slacks. His shoulders fall, previously burdened with the weight of confusion.

He’s seeing everything from another perspective up in the sky. Moments, memories of the past are flying faster than he can keep track of:

The gifts, rarely given and swiftly taken away.

The Christmas tree looks so small, smug and insignificant, no matter how hard Dream pushed it. 

The weathered party set up on the beach. 

Dream’s tent that still stands compared to the ruins of his. 

The ruins of the campsite he’d created.

That mask, that odd mask that Dream always wears, with the painted eyes on it following his every movement.

Dream, sitting on the walls of L’Manberg.

Watching.

Tommy never considered how easy it was to watch.

It’s so easy.

It’s too easy.

His eyes widen.

“He was just here to watch me! He wasn’t my friend!”

It falls from his lips like water from broken ice. His breathing hitches, his hands shake as he scans the surrounding area. Was it always this small? He uses his finger to circle the air around it, and all of his past transgressions are tied up in a neat loop. Barely a grand gesture. A scuff in the dirt.

He sits in the high, the euphoria of the last puzzle piece. Despite his jokes, Tommy has never tried a drug in his life, but this may be his new addiction: the feeling of utter and whole understanding.

Logsteadshire doesn’t matter. It’s a speck on a giant map of the Dream SMP. All of his mistakes, all of his work and effort, all of his pain and doubt, confined to a tiny box.

He thinks it’s a bit shit, to be honest.

His eyes shut.

With that sentiment in his heart, Tommy kicks off the top of the tower.

He jumps. He leaps. He soars. He’s falling. He’s rising.

He looks to the sky as he falls. Above him is endless blue. It is the dawn, and the stars are returning the atmosphere to the sun’s reign. He decides if he’s going to see one more thing before he dies, he wants it to be—

He hits the surface and is submerged in blue.

Water is also blue, he realizes as he floats. He stays submerged for a moment, only a moment to feel as weightless in body as he does in mind.

Then he shatters the surface tension.

Tommy gasps for air as he pulls himself up out of the pond. He lays belly-down on the earth for a moment, then rolls to his back. The sky is bright. 

He’s laughing.

He is back in his body again. His chest heaves, his breathing heightens. This is not the disconnect of earlier, instead it is a frenzy of realization and momentum, building up all along but kept at bay by Dream’s comments before. 

Only one thought comes to mind:

“He won’t be back for a week.”

A punishment. A punishment? Tommy almost laughs again, he’s giddy. How could Dream leaving be a punishment? Dream was his warden, his tether to Logsteadshire. Now he had been cut loose.

Or had he?

Dream is his friend. Dream is kind. Dream smiled at him when there was no one else to shine that appreciation on him. Dream gave him a trident—a taste of power, real power he had craved, that was absent for so long—and taught him how to use it. Dream rubbed his back when he huddled in his tent. 

Dream ruffled his hair. Like Wilbur.

Why does he feel sick?

The knots begin to tangle in his chest once more. One of his hands trails up to it, clawing at a pain that wasn’t manifesting in the realm of the physical.

Dream, Dream, Dream—

He shakes his head. Then he shakes his hands. He was getting confused again, and he needed to avoid that confusion at all costs.

After a deep breath, Tommy looks down at himself.

His face twitches in an odd, unfamiliar way. 

He’s run ragged, shirt filthy and torn with wear and overuse in the harsh elements. His hands are raw and rough from untreated axe handles and hours of chopping to gather wood. Wood that was chopped over and over again as his previous progress became little more than ash and a scent of gunpowder on the wind. His shirt is dripping with pond water. 

He realizes he’s grinning.

As simple as that, Tommy starts walking. 

He will not allow those thoughts to catch him. He can move faster than them. He can go farther.

The air is crisp. The wind blows on his face.

He walks faster.

He gets outside of the borders of Logsteadshire. He goes past the village he’d salvaged bread from, he’s past the river. It truly is the wilderness. 

He couldn’t even smell the explosives left behind him.

Tommy’s running. It is unlike a wild animal fleeing its hunter, it is unlike a refugee seeking shelter. It is like a king coming home. It is like a hero resurfacing in the eleventh hour.

The thought returns: a week. He has a week until Dream returns, a week that Dream believes him to be moping and mourning. 

His pace quickens. The snow crunches beneath one shoe, the other one long lost and his foot numb, but he doesn’t care. He is freezing, hurting, and in the worst physical and mental condition of his life. His fingers are beginning to turn blue. His heart aches.

But he doesn’t care. 

He’s free.

Tommy bounds up the top of a snowy hill. He pumps a fist into the air. The rising sun frames it behind him, his hair illuminated by the gold, soul full of reignited fire.

“Wooo! Yeah! Suck it, bitch! TommyInnit is back!”


End file.
